​ISIS ‘organ harvesting’ must be probed by Security Council – Iraqi envoy

The Islamic State is harvesting human organs to finance its blood-driven caliphate, according to Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, urging its Security Council to investigate the issue.

Envoy Mohamed Alhakim
called on the 15-member body to look at allegations of organ
removal by the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) as bodies with
surgical incisions and missing kidneys were discovered in shallow
mass graves.

“We have bodies. Come and examine them,” the envoy,
Mohamed Alhakim, said on Tuesday.

After the testimony, the UN envoy to Iraq, Nikolay Mladenov, then
briefed the Council saying that there are numerous reports to
support the claim of organ harvesting, which the envoy says is
done by the caliphate to finance its cause.

“It’s very clear that the tactics ISIS is using expand by the
day,” Mladenov said.

“Almost daily terrorist attacks continue to deliberately
target all Iraqis, most notably the Shi’ite community, as well as
ethnic and religious minorities, across the country,” he
told the Security Council, specifying that at least 790 people
were killed in January in Iraq.

“Equally worrying is the increasing number of reports of
revenge attacks committed particularly against members of the
Sunni community in areas liberated from (Islamic State)
control,” he said.

Looking into the source of ISIS funding, Middle East media
outlet, Al-Monitor, claimed that foreign doctors were harvesting
organs in Mosul in a report last year based on a medical source.

According to the Iraqi doctor providing the information,
otolaryngologist Siruwan al-Mosuli, there had been an
“unusual movement” in clinics in Mosul, where Arab and
foreign surgeons were hired, but “prohibited from mixing with
local doctors.”

The organs, al-Mosuli told Al-Monitor, were coming from kidnapped
individuals, or wounded fighters.

“Surgeries take place within a hospital and organs are
quickly transported through networks specialized in trafficking
human organs,” the doctor claimed, accusing “specialized
mafia” of being involved internationally.

Organ harvesting news comes as the Islamic State jihadists
burnt 45 people alive near the town
al-Baghdadi in Western Iraq. It also comes in the footsteps of
the recent beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya and the
brutal execution of a Jordanian pilot.